Well as you know Ryanna will gain the ability to transform herself into a demon. Her first demon form will give her access to the element fire and this is what her portrait will look like while she's in this form. Later in the game she'll gain transformations for other elements and effects as well.

The transformations do not yet work, as I am still only working to get all artwork for this feature done, and then I'll go to actually implement stuff on this feature.... It's a feature to use with care as it doesn't only cost ability points to transform into a demon, it takes ability points to maintain the form as well. You can however transform her back into her human form whenever it's her turn to act, and at the end of each battle she'll turn back into her human form automatically.

Of course, Ryanna has no idea at all what enables her to transform and you could expect that this is gonna be revealed alter in the story.

Well I wish I could say A LOT has been done, but there hasn't been done anything at all...

It was planned that I would take one week off in order to keep the rest in myself and the week after that, well....

My situation got pretty bad....
Deep pain in my chest and belly caused me to call the doctor in the middle of the night who got herself into a panic sending an ambulance to me to check up if my heart was still in order...
Dang! Now I was not only ill, but also scared as crap!

Well, rest assured folks, my heart is completely in order. Either I ate something wrong, or I just caught a virus or so. Medication lowered the pain and in stead of that I got couching and sneezing like crazy, so I guess that given the circumstances I deemed it a wise thing to postpone all activities on this game until I really felt better.

Today is the first day I actually feel like I can get on the move...
I've done some pre-work to get into Ryanna discovering her first transformation form now, and the next challenge will be to make the transformation itself happen. This ain't gonna be an easy process, but I hope I can give it my all.

Now after this transformation thing works, I'm gonna start on implementing the first city and that will also be the moment that some alpha versions may be given out to a selected group of people. Please note, you will then get access to a game that is in a VERY EARLY state of development, so many feature will be very very buggy or not even be implemented at all.

The alpha will only be available on itch.io on a secret page I have there. Why itch.io and Game Jolt, you wonder (as it does feel like a bit of treason for me as a Game Jolt moderator), well itch.io allows me to easily keep the alpha up-to-date everyday, with a simple unix shell script thanks to the Butler tool, and as long as Game Jolt as no equivalent, all I can do is upload it manually, and since I intend to update the alpha every day (that is every day I actually WORKED on the game), an CLI tool is simply needed as through a browser upload it's just undoable. I must face facts here... Sorry!

Please note that when you sign up for being an alpha tester I do want you to take a look if there are issues I don't know about and put them on my issue tracker if you find any. And of course, don't discuss in the open what kind of story line plot-twists or in-game jokes you found, as we don't want spoilers before the game is even out, now do we?

If you are interested, you can just leave a reply and make sure I have a way I can contact you in private, like a PM on the LÖVE forum, or throw me a friend request on Game Jolt, or befriend me on Discord or whatever (I want to avoid e-mail), so I can once the alpha get 'released' throw you the url of the secret itch.io page plus its password.

Well I'm still working on the transformation routine.
This is one of the most complex things in the game to get working and my time to do actively work on the game has been minimal, adding to that that I am still not fully recovered from my illness yet, well you get the picture.

Nevertheless I am pleased to say that I *did* make progress in all this, although it comes with a lot of cockroaches (bugs that keep on bugging you even after 1000 fix attempts), but I never expected complex stuff like this to go right in one go. That would be a miracle.

For now transformation is working, although some workouts are still required here....

But see here, ladies and gentlemen....
Ryanna in her first transformation form

Well, today I've finished putting in the achievement engine, and several achievements will be added to the game over time now. This was quite an operation, as quite a ton of bugs in the bot Anna were exposed during this process, but that's all fixed.

Speaking of Anna. Are you playing "The Fairy Tale REVAMPED"? Yes? Cool! Do you have an Anna account too? Super! It's even tight to your TFTREVAMP savegame? PERFECT!
The Fairy Tale REVAMPED has a secret location called "Anna's Temple" which can only be unlocked if the the answer to the previous questions I asked is all "yes". My bot Anna gives you rewards through that temple based on how well you played TFT-REVAMPED, but it doesn't end there. If you have big scores in Cynthia Johnson, you can also get more treasure there, and yes your achievements in Sixty-Three Fires of Lung will also contribute in having more treasure in that place. A similar location might be available in this game too, although that is not yet fully decided. (Psst. If you really did well you can even unlock a very very secret boss in Anna's Temple in TFTREVAMP, and yes, this game can contribute). Is Anna cool or what?

Of course if you have no interest in Anna, you can of course also directly connect to the Game Jolt API and register your achievements here. Won't get you the benefits Anna provides though.

I have also been working on the scenario coming after the first boss, and I hope I can finish that over the course of the weekend, so I can start on the first city of the game: Windville. This will also be the place were prince Nino will join you on your quest, and that can make the game even more interesting. Also, this is a parody game, and several parodies and references to other games and even stuff outside of the gaming world, so once the demo's out (which will cover Windville too), you can try to find them all, once you get there.

local windville = {}
local map=field:GetMap().map
local mills = {}
local rand=love.math.random
local millclock = klok:CreateTimer(.005)
function windville:oncycle()
if millclock:enough() then
for mill in each (mills) do
mill.deg = mill.deg + mill.spd
if mill.deg>360 then mill.deg = mill.deg - 360 end
mill.obj.ROTATION=mill.deg
end
millclock:reset()
end
end
local function startmills()
CSay("= Starting all the windmills")
for o,l in map:allobjects() do
if o.TEXTURE=="GFX/TEXTURES/WINDVILLE/MOLEN/WIEKEN.JPBF" then
CSay(" = Found a mill blade on layer "..l)
local mill = {}
mills[#mills+1]=mill
mill.obj=o
mill.layer=l
mill.deg=rand(0,360)
mill.spd=rand(50,110)/1000
o.ROTATION=mill.deg
end
end
return windville
end
return startmills() -- will return the entire module in the process and start the mills. Yup, this is what we call dirty code.

Please note though, that this code refers to many functions in other source files This game is using the LÖVE engine, but let’s be frank… We don’t see any references to the love. object, do we? Those references are in other .lua files, but I'm not crazy enough to show them all
Also note that this is only the base code here of the City of Windville. More code is gonna be written, count on that

I guess I was quiet for awhile...
That does NOT mean I was doing nothing, oh no!
What gets me a bit at this moment is that before I took on a project this large in LÖVE, I've always worked with BlitzMax, and damn do I have a large bunch of modules written in it I used in every BlitzMax program that are now all -poof- useless as BlitzMax code is not useable in LÖVE. As this may be my first, but NOT my last big project in LÖVE, I needed to do some more "under da hood" work, and that was a time consuming process, but totally not interesting enough to talk about here. It was kinda boring actually.

On the game I've made a start to get more done in Windville city, and I've scripted Ryanna's first encounter with Prince Nino.
I wish I could start inviting those who like to try the current alpha version in, but a few extremely critical bugs have been discovered which need fixing first. After that I can seriously allow people to see what I have up until now... Windville will get me quite some work, not to mention that adding new characters into an RPG game never goes without cockroaches (that's what I call bugs that take forever to fix), and as Nino will join Ryanna in her quest... Well, this is may be the first RPG I create with LÖVE, but it's not the first RPG I make in general (and I've never used tools like RPG maker for that), so I know what I'm doing..... (I hope)

First of all, I've now scripted out the upgrade system.
Well to make a bad site developer's joke, I guess Ryanna's HP could not be found
The upgrade system allows you to do a limited amounts of updates. As you progress in the game, the number of upgrades the game allows may be increased. The game does not allow you to change your weapons or your armor, only to upgrade them.

I am planning though (no promises yet, but very likely it'll be there) a system that allows you to put some jewels on your character, and make your level deciding on how many jewels that will be, allowing some extra effects like more poison resistance or even a few stat boosts. This shouldn't be too hard, since my earlier game Star Story has a similar system (although Star Story was not made with LÖVE, it does use Lua as its scripting language, meaning I can very well use those routines in this game too... Well almost).

I can also say that I've almost put the last hand on the city of Windville and with that the first city is done. City creation is something I really hate when I make an RPG. It's a load of work designing the city itself and to put in enough people and to make them say something that is not entirely bullcrap. Of course, since this game is a parody, nonsensical things could now contribute to the clichés I'm trying to spoof

The city also hides a lock that any gamer who knows the history of gaming should be able to open. Trust me, the solution is legend.

It will take awhile before I can really release a playable demo, but I do already allow a few people to see the current alpha version. It's not much, only one opening spot, one dungeon and one city, but it can show a little bit how I work, and if you find bugs, I got an issue tracker on GitHub for this game. If you want, lemme know, and tell me if you are on Linux, Mac or Windows. (Mac and Windows come in 'full builds' for Linux you will need to install LÖVE 0.10.2 and a few extra instructions may be given as I've not fully followed the rules of LÖVE. Once public releases draw closer I want to find out if I can make an AppImage, but as I am running Linux in a VM now testing is hard on me, and I could never get LÖVE on the move within that VM. Speaking on VMs. I could start the Windows version in WINE (I'm on Mac), but I suppose that's not the best way to test, and Windows and I are not the best of friends).
I've a hidden page (with a password) on itch.io on which the alpha is now updated every day I work on the game (I love that Butler tool, and that is why I use itch.io and not Game Jolt, and I know I shouldn't)

If you play the alpha please note, the game is incomplete. Many features do not yet work or are not yet stable (can may cause the game to crash), and some graphics are still placeholders. This is very extremely alpha If you are not into games in such an extreme premature state, better wait for the demo.

Now people who know me (and my games) from Game Jolt, may recognise some NPCs as playable characters from my earlier work. That was not laziness, that was done on purpose. They are cameos. They are easily recognised since unlike any other NPC character, none of them are mentioned by name when you speak to them (or when people speak about them), but only by a vague description. It's a bit of a reference (or a kind of ad) to my other games, but also, when you make a parody of others, you shouldn't be afraid to parody yourself as well, and so I did.

I've now also scripted the part in which Nino joins the party. I haven't yet done all the work on Nino (the game will crash now if Nino gets himself into combat, for starters), and that will now be my prime concern. The game is now slowly yet surely coming to a point that the "skeleton" of the game, or the "engine part" (as far as you can speak of that about a game written in full Lua code) is mostly done allowing me to focus on the content, and that's where it gets interesting for me. I won't complain. It's the price to pay when you don't use fully set up engines like RPG maker, but it also makes the game a lot more satisfying for me to work on when I take into account what I had to do to get the game fully set up the way it's now.

It's been awhile, the most important reason for this is because I've a lot on my plate now, plus the heath of summer is getting onto me. Hot summers are due to high moisture rates pretty horrible in the Netherlands when you are oversensitive to that, so it's puts a damper on all my activities.

I did make some progress though...

The Caves of Starrow are growing more and more into a real dungeon now

Nino's gauntlet works the way it's intended

And I've put in a routine allowing you to view all transformations Ryanna obtained so far.

NOTE: She cannot yet transform in battle other than the auto-transformation during the first boss-fight, but "fixing" that is one of the first things on my schedule.

It has been quiet here for over a month, I know...
This project ain't dead though, but as this is a hobby project after all, I do often have to put my attention to other things as well...
And well, some other things came my way requiring my attention.

I have resumed this project today, though, and I hope I'll soon be able to post another update

First of all, sorry for my absence in this thread for such a long time. If you think this project is dead because I was silent so long, then you are wrong. I was just dealing with a very long internet issue keeping me off the internet for over a month due to an ISP who failed in its own bookkeeping, and aside from this project, I also had other matters to keep in order, and then keeping all sites and forums up-to-date is not always a handy way to go, and I guess you already noticed that Game Jolt is my primary community to keep up-to-date.

Still during my absence on this forum a lot has happened to this game. I was planning to do the release of this game in multiple-stages
1. An alpha demo that contains the first dungeons up to the point in which Shirley would enter the party as a playable character. Expect some bugs here and not all features being fully operational.
2. A beta release with all dungeons, but which may still be buggy
3. The "final" release, although I put "final" between quotes, so I don't believe in bug-free software, so there will always be a bug somewhere that will only surface after the full release which will require fixing. I guess....

Now the target point of Shirley entering the party has been reached, so the most important milestone before the demo release has been passed. I am now working on adding two side-quests the demo should already cover and to make sure that some really "unforgivable" bugs are fixed. You can take a look on my plan board to see what I still plan to do.